Lost Victories

Everything in war is simple, Clausewitz said; but the simplest thing, he added, is incredibly difficult.
Consider the basic relationship between politics and war. Clausewitz made the equation crystal clear, even simplistic, in his classic dictum that war is an extension of politics by different means. In other words, political ends govern the exertions of war. Or, the military are the means by which to gain political goals. The political leaders establish the objectives, the military men seek to attain them.
Nothing could be simpler or more obvious. This is the essential definition of war: organized violence in quest of political advantages. Otherwise, conflict and killing are meaningless and immoral.
Clausewitz expressed this very plainly in his monumental study of the nature of war. But beyond some general observations and several specific illustrations, he could not systematically examine the other side of the coin, the politics to which war is attached, for he lacked a complementary treatise on the nature of international politics.
If the primacy of the political over the military is beyond question, the application of the relationship in the real world poses problems of terrible complexity. Political wishes and the military methods to realize them, political motives and the military procedures to support them, are seldom clear-cut and in balance at any given moment. They are anything but easy to synchronize. Furthermore, where is the fine and sometimes invisible line between the political and military spheres?
The case of Adolf Hitler is instructive. Apart from the fatal flaws that finally crushed him, he was for a time a political genius.
Whether he followed a blueprint or extemporized, he gained striking political triumphs. Without resorting to force, he remilitarized the Rhineland, annexed Austria, and conquered Czechslovakia. He thereby expanded the territory and the power of Germany...